Sofia Tekela-Smith is an artist of Rotuman descent based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She has built a practice over many years that honours Pacific materials and meaning, working with mother-of-pearl, cowrie shell, pounamu and found oceanic objects. Rooted in the aesthetics, materials and philosophies of the Moana, her practice creates connections between ancestral memory and contemporary art forms and spaces. Her work is held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
The Museum’s Documentary Heritage collections span manuscript, ephemera, photography, oral history and works on paper from the 15th century to today. These collections hold significant records of Māori and Pacific histories, the story of Tāmaki Makaurau, and Aotearoa New Zealand’s connections to the wider world through exploration, migration and conflict.
Tekela-Smith’s practice is inseparable from her lived experience as a Rotuman artist, grounded in relationships to place, body and community. Her work responds to ancestral imagery and documentary records as living sources of knowledge, using contemporary artmaking to reconnect past and present. Through this approach, she seeks to translate what is held in archives into new taonga that speak to Pacific communities today, extending ancestral making and meaning into the present.
During the residency, Tekela-Smith will undertake focused research within the Museum’s Documentary Heritage collections, with particular attention to photographic archives, manuscripts and field records relating to Rotuma and wider Moana craft traditions.
Tekela-Smith says, “The Matafatafa Aho Residency is an extraordinary opportunity to engage directly with the Documentary Heritage collections at Tāmaki Paenga Hira. These taonga offer not only an academic record but a living thread to our ancestors, and I hope to respond through a new body of work for 2026 that reinterprets these images and histories into contemporary Pacific form.”
“This residency represents both an honour and a responsibility to stand within the continuum of our heritage and translate what is held in the archives into living taonga that speak to today’s Pacific world,” says Tekela-Smith
Li’omatua Dr Wanda Ieremia-Allan, Associate Curator for Documentary Heritage (Pacific Collections) at Auckland Museum, says the residency is an important platform for Pacific-led engagement with archival collections.
“The Matafatafa Aho Pacific Artist Residency creates space for Pacific artists to work with collections that reflect their own histories, knowledge systems and lived experience. Tekela-Smith brings a deeply considered material practice and strong research focus, and we look forward to seeing how their work activates these archival records.”
The Matafatafa Aho Pacific Artist Residency is a key initiative within the Museum’s Matafatafa Aho Five-Year Pacific Delivery Plan, supporting the Museum’s role as kaitiaki of one of the world’s most significant Pacific collections. The residency supports meaningful connection between artists, collections and communities, and contributes to the ongoing care, interpretation and sharing of Pacific heritage.
Creative New Zealand has committed funding to support three years of the Matafatafa Aho Pacific Artist Residency, helping to establish a sustainable platform for Pacific artists to engage with the Museum’s collections and share their creative responses with the public.
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Li’omatua Dr Wanda Ieremia-Allan, Associate Curator for Documentary Heritage (Pacific Collections) and Sofia Tekela-Smith